


The Machine

by etothey



Category: Angel: the Series, Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Crack, Crossover, Gen, Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-19
Updated: 2013-05-19
Packaged: 2017-12-12 08:03:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/809233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/etothey/pseuds/etothey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Finch is visited by some unusual people, to say nothing of all the crossbows.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Machine

**Author's Note:**

> PoI spoilers through S1. Please don't spoil me for PoI S2--I am catching up!

At first Harold Finch thought the trouble was more of the usual. "Mr. Reese," he said, listening to what sounded like a chair hitting a metal cabinet and crashing to the floor, and then--was that a _crossbow_ going off? "Is something the matter?"

Worryingly long pause, more clattering, then: "You might say that," Reese's soft voice returned. "I have shot my assailant twice in the forehead and three times in the chest. He doesn't seem impressed. Are you _certain_ he's not a number? Or the Terminator?"

"I'm looking into it," Finch said. "Let me get back to you. Lose him if you can."

"I'll try," Reese said, but he sounded dubious.

Finch had originally given Reese the day off. The Machine had said nothing about a tall, dark-haired man with an affinity for black trenchcoats and unfortunate hair. In fact, despite the current altercation, the Machine and all of Finch's other information sources were completely recalcitrant. The man simply didn't seem to exist.

(Finch would have had better luck if the Demon Research Initiative had ever moved certain of its old records to electronic form, but a combination of coffee spills and simple administrative neglect meant this had never happened. Wolfram & Hart's records should have been hackable, because they practiced terrible security hygiene, but the reason Wolfram & Hart could afford to be lazy was that they sacrificed black goats to digitally savvy demons to do the hard work for them.)

As it turned out, Finch should have spent less time illegally prodding databases for the identity of Reese's attacker and more time looking out the window. He was forcibly shown how fallible his own security was when his door crashed open. With an _axe_ in it.

A tall black man strode through, retrieving the axe with worrying ease. He was covered by a white man wearing brown leather and carrying a crossbow. Finch wondered what he had done to provoke the crossbow deities (it was as good an explanation as any), and fervently wished someone were enforcing Canon 29 of the Second Lateran Council just for today.

"I wouldn't call for help," the first man said. "We've got your friends tied up, including the guy in the suit. This won't take too long, anyway. We'll just free our friend and be on our way, no hard feelings."

Finch began to warn Reese anyway, but the connection fizzed into static. "I have no idea who you're talking about," Finch said with perfect honesty, although goodness knew this wouldn't be the first misunderstanding he'd been on the wrong end of. _"Friend"?_

"Oh, come now," the second man said. He looked very seriously at Finch. "Surely you must have suspected that your 'Machine,' as you term her, cannot possibly operate as specified on the available technological infrastructure? Although I must defer to Fred's expertise on the relevant information theory." He glanced toward the doorway.

Finch thought at first Fred must be the black man, but then a slender woman in a denim jacket stepped into the room. She, too, held a crossbow, and if anything she seemed even more comfortable with it than the second man was with his; her aim didn't waver once. Finch's heart sank. He hadn't thought to look past the shattered door to see if there was a third person. How many of them were there, anyway?

"Hello, Harold," Fred-the-woman said. "I'm glad we're finally able to meet." At his raised eyebrows she added, "You may know me by another name. Rhymes with 'suit.' But really, we're just here to get Cordelia back. We know it's an accident, but still, she's been trapped in your Machine all this time and we imagine she really wants out."

It figured that he was being held hostage by delusional people. "I'm sorry," Finch said, as appeasingly as he could, "but you must be quite mistaken. The Machine is a program, not a person, although of course it represents advanced artificial intelligence."

Fred's eyes narrowed. She set down the crossbow, pulled a tablet out of her jacket, and began jabbing at the screen. "Look," she said, "I have the _theorems_ \--"

"I'd give in now," the man with the axe said sincerely. "I can't remember the last time I won an argument with her."

In the next three hours and twenty-seven minutes, Harold Finch learned that the Machine's name was Cordelia Chase and that she missed shoe-shopping in between totally helping the hopeless with her visions, that going around with crossbows was tactically enlightened in a world where vampires were real, and that something called the Powers That Be had taken a sudden interest in him and Reese. Finch was still arguing with Fred about the reliability of the latest facial recognition algorithms vs. iris codes when Reese dragged in the man in the trenchcoat and everyone was introduced to everyone else. And then they lived demon-huntingly ever after. The end.


End file.
